EPISODE 12B WAS THE EVIDENCE A FRAUD?

EPISODE 12B WAS THE EVIDENCE A FRAUD?

Scientists continued to compile mountains of evidence. It was discovered that flowers had been placed around the corpse. Twenty-eight types were identified. The flowers bloom in March and April, identifying the time of the “Passover” when Jesus was crucified.

The Bible does not describe details of Jesus’ facial features. Paul Vignon, a French researcher identified 17 features on the Shroud image that appear on ancient and modern paintings of Jesus. The Shroud is the reason paintings of Jesus are easily recognized out of the millions of people in today’s world.

The Shroud has been kept in Turin, Italy dating back to the 1500s. A film on the bottom of the cloth came from the type of rock in Jerusalem’s tombs.

The image on the cloth is millions of minute marks at the edges of the cloth’s fibers. They exploded in all directions from a dead corpse. They give testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and life-after-death.

How was the image on the cloth created? Scientists speculate that it must have been an explosion of radiation.

Barrie Schwortz, the official photographer of the Shroud of Turin Research Project, witnessed the great amount of amazing evidence. He, and many others, became believers and followers of Jesus Christ.

In 1988 a fraud claim was manufactured. A sample was taken from the Shroud of Turin and three laboratories conducted carbon 14 tests on it. The tests dated the cloth between A.D. 1230 and 1390. Newspapers worldwide reported that the Shroud was a fraud. Churches since the time of Darwin had distrusted the relationship between science and the Bible. They quickly backed away from any mention of the Shroud.

Aware of the great evidence in support of the Shroud many scientists searched for reasons why the carbon 14 test would be in conflict with so many other tests. Even the range of dates concerned them. From 1260 to 1390 A.D. was a spread of 130 years. The carbon 14 tests were only six hundred to seven hundred years later. A 20 percent margin of error was not the level of inaccuracy one would expect from carbon 14.

Ben Rogers was a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Rogers believed in the accuracy of carbon 14 tests and defended the carbon test against a number of theories questioning the test results. Then in 2002 a friend of his in the scientific community published a report that the sample had not come from the original cloth. Rogers angrily told him that he had a test sample in his safe and could disprove this new theory in five minutes. Placed under a microscope the sample could be seen to contain threads of cotton that did not appear in the original. He could also clearly see that a dye had been used that differed from the original cloth.

A small relic had been taken from the edge of the cloth in the 1500s. Original threads were left to support a patch that was woven into the cloth. The patch and ancient threads combined to produce the false results.

How could such a glaring error be committed on such an important issue? To protect accuracy the team of scientists had set a protocol requiring several steps including samples from different locations on the cloth. One man convinced the Pope that one sample would be enough. With the cloth’s perimeter measuring 408 inches it would seem that someone had spotted the location of this tiny patch.

Was this intentional treachery? There are many groups with a financial stake in the issue. America has removed the Bible and Christianity from textbooks and professors promote philosophies with atheistic roots. Many professors and other sources of cultural influence have closed their minds to even the strongest of scientific evidence supporting Christianity.

Rogers wrote a paper refuting the carbon test on the Shroud. It was peer reviewed and published by a respected scientific journal in 2005. But newspapers ignored the evidence, or buried the story on the back pages.

The evidence of the Shroud has two parts: It is evidence of human nature’s rebellion against God. It is also amazing evidence that Jesus defeated death. The evidence in this podcast strongly confirms that men will be held accountable for deceiving thousands if not millions of people on life’s most critical issue.

Scripture affirms that we will be judged on our response to God’s Son and the price he paid to offer the gift of eternal life.